Fasting For Fast Weight Loss - Does it Work?

A question that is often asked of nutritionists and personal trainers is regarding fasting and weight loss. In other words does fasting lead to weight loss? Well that depends over what time frame that you measure the weight loss.

Fasting means to abstain from food directly, or to severely limit food intake. Will that produce weight loss; of course it will, but weight loss with a sting in the tail. When you fast or go on a severely calorie restrictive diet several things occur. First the amount of food or undigested food remaining in your digestive tract decreases. Rather similar to only filling your petrol tank with a little petrol rather than having a full tank. The car automatically becomes lighter.

Your body will still require energy so food stores then become consumed, including muscle. But the first stores to be used up are the glycogen stores which are readily available. Glycogen is stored attached to water so another nice weight drop comes from the loss of these two compounds.

Now if your fast continues then you may start burning fat and muscle. Now the sting in the tail mentioned before comes from burning muscle. When the fast, or severe calorie restrictive diet ends and it has to, then the process reverses. Your body during the fast will be trying to conserve energy like mad so you will often feel tired, lethargic and low in energy.

This cannot go on for long so eventually the fast or diet has to end and the body now quickly makes up the glycogen and water store. Well at least you may have lost some fat but the kicker is that you lost muscle as well.

What's important about muscle? It burns calories, lots of them. Less muscle equates to less calorie burning and more weight gain.

So short term, perhaps a week or two sure you will lose weight, long term you will probably end up heavier and most likely fatter than before. And that folks is the way most diets go as well, with most dieters ending up heavier than before they started, but it doesn't have to be like that. When it comes to weight loss smart beats will power and suffering every time.

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